Breathe: A Life in Flow by Rickson Gracie (1)

Chapter 1: The Gracie Clan, or The Craziest, Lyingest Family in Fighting

I had finished the book I was reading, and I was browsing my Kindle library for something new to read, cursing my indecisive self for creating this problem. But then I spied a book I picked up last week on sale for $2.99, and I knew where my destiny lie.

I love the mythology of the Gracies more than almost any other aspect of combat sports, because I know how unhinged it is. That’s why I got this book. Rickson is the mythical undefeated undefeatable Superman of the family, but you can take one look at his record to see that the reason he never lost was because he never faced anybody. Sure, he was almost 40 by the time MMA got into full swing, but just once perhaps he could have taken on someone with a little more of a shoot pedigree than Nobuhiko Takada.

So I fired up the book expecting to have a laugh or two and some bushido mumbo jumbo. What I found was page after page of the funniest and craziest things ever written about fighting, and we’re not even to the parts where Rickson talks about his own life yet. I have never highlighted so many passages so quickly in a book before. This is what you get when you allow one of the funniest echo chambers in history write a book without any fact-checking or editing.

I wanted to share them here, since they would otherwise live in a Twitter thread that could disappear any day. This page could disappear too, but what can you do.

In the first few pages, Rickson tells the history of the Gracie name:

Next, he covers a little about the generation before his, including father Helio and uncle Carlos:

Then, we learn the Gracie Family Fucking Strategy as well as their opinion on Coca-Cola, and, oh yeah, that they are reincarnated samurai:

Remember the legendary tale of Helio losing to Masahiko Kimura? Here’s the Gracie family version of those events:

We learn that an important part of Raising Children The Gracie Way is THROW YOUR SONS LIKE FOOTBALLS:

And we round the chapter out with a heartwarming tale of Helio’s fascist bootlicking, just to mix things up:

There are nine more chapters left. Can’t wait to see where we go from here!